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Dedicated
to: Children of the World
Imagining You and Your World
An
Eye-Opening Exhibit
Presented by Others Are Us
An eye-opening exhibit of children's drawings and stories
were showcased at the annual celebration of Imagining
You and Your World,
a project promoting peace through art and culture. Students
from public schools in New York City communicated with
children in Israel, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt and the Occupied
Palestinian Territories about their respective cultures
and lives via the Internet and a guided curriculum with
their teachers and a New York City artist.
Imagining You and Your World is a project of Others Are Us, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered
in New York City that works to achieve a better life
for all the peoples of the world and especially our
children by using the arts as a vehicle for bringing
individuals from different countries, cultures, backgrounds
and beliefs together in community to establish mutual
understanding, tolerance and cooperation.
Imagining You and Your World promotes long-term world peace by encouraging children to
approach others with tolerance and respect. The
project innovates a more constructive way of dealing
with differences than the suspicion, defensiveness and
fear that have overtaken us. Imagining You and Your World represents a first step towards building
positive connections between people in conflict.
Others Are Us piloted Imagining You and Your World in the 2002-2003 school year and successfully
continued and expanded the project this past year. Imagining
You and Your World
links children in New York City public schools with
children in Arab and Jewish communities both in the
Middle East and the USA. Art is the primary means
of communication and technology is our vehicle. This
exhibit, the public culminating event, where children
present what they have learned and serve as ambassadors
of cultural understanding is an integral project component.
Through creative expression and technology, children get to know
and understand each other as children not ideologies and cultural caricatures. They can then
share with adults what they have learned about building
positive relationships and opening avenues of communication. Children
are thus empowered to play an active role in shaping
our world today and the one they will inherit in the
future. This is vital in our post-9-11 society
where fear and anxiety have entered children's lives,
fostering feelings of helplessness.
The 2004 celebration of Imagining You and Your World, highlighted by students reading their
collaborative stories and an exhibit of artwork and
other communications, took place at the Gallery of the
Art Institute of New York City between May 28 until June 30 at 11 Beach
Street in Tribeca. The Art Institute
of New York City is a leading institution for career
preparation in culinary arts, restaurant management,
pastry arts, graphic design and multimedia and web design,
fashion design and video production.
The mission of Others Are Usis to engage the global public in projects
that use creative expression to build bridges between
people and to confront and explore important issues
in our world today.
_ . _
Please
contribute to the creation of this language of peace
and tolerance by sending symbols as you find or invent
them to imagining@othersareus.org. Both projects will be ongoing and we hope
to expand them to more corners of the world over time.
For
additional information about OTHERS ARE US or Imagining
You and Your World, please contact us@othersareus.org
or visit our web site, http://www.othersareus.org. (We have a new look
thanks to webmaster, David A. Hirsch, who is donating
his time and expertise to OAU!)
Contacts:
The Art Institute of New York City
....Others Are Us
Midge Elias .Annette
Swierzbinski
Director of Public Relations ..
.Director
melias@edmc.edu us@othersareus.org
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